In regard to Island 74, which is situated not
far from the former Napoleon, a freak of the river
here has sorely perplexed the laws of men and made
them a vanity and a jest. When the State of Arkansas
was chartered, she controlled ’to the center
of the river’—a most unstable line.
The State of Mississippi claimed ’to the channel’—another
shifty and unstable line. No. 74 belonged to
Arkansas. By and by a cut-off threw this big
island out of Arkansas, and yet not within Mississippi.
‘Middle of the river’ on one side of it,
‘channel’ on the other. That is
as I understand the problem. Whether I have got
the details right or wrong, this fact remains:
that here is this big and exceedingly valuable island
of four thousand acres, thrust out in the cold, and
belonging to neither the one State nor the other;
paying taxes to neither, owing allegiance to neither.
One man owns the whole island, and of right is ‘the
man without a country.’
Island 92 belongs to Arkansas. The river moved
it over and joined it to Mississippi. A chap
established a whiskey shop there, without a Mississippi
license, and enriched himself upon Mississippi custom
under Arkansas protection (where no license was in
those days required).
We glided steadily down the river in the usual privacy—steamboat
or other moving thing seldom seen. Scenery as
always: stretch upon stretch of almost unbroken
forest, on both sides of the river; soundless solitude.
Here and there a cabin or two, standing in small openings
on the gray and grassless banks—cabins
which had formerly stood a quarter or half-mile farther
to the front, and gradually been pulled farther and
farther back as the shores caved in. As at Pilcher’s
Point, for instance, where the cabins had been moved
back three hundred yards in three months, so we were
told; but the caving banks had already caught up with
them, and they were being conveyed rearward once more.
Napoleon had but small opinion of Greenville, Mississippi,
in the old times; but behold, Napoleon is gone to
the cat-fishes, and here is Greenville full of life
and activity, and making a considerable flourish in
the Valley; having three thousand inhabitants, it is
said, and doing a gross trade of $2,500,000 annually.
A growing town.
There was much talk on the boat about the Calhoun
Land Company, an enterprise which is expected to work
wholesome results. Colonel Calhoun, a grandson
of the statesman, went to Boston and formed a syndicate
which purchased a large tract of land on the river,
in Chicot County, Arkansas—some ten thousand
acres—for cotton-growing. The purpose
is to work on a cash basis: buy at first hands,
and handle their own product; supply their negro laborers
with provisions and necessaries at a trifling profit,
say 8 or 10 per cent.; furnish them comfortable quarters,
etc., and encourage them to save money and remain
on the place. If this proves a financial success,
as seems quite certain, they propose to establish
a banking-house in Greenville, and lend money at an
unburdensome rate of interest—6 per cent.
is spoken of.
